Big, sparkling eyes, even-white skin and a slim figure create the mold for South Korean beauty. Korean idols’ stunning appearances have led to K-pop dominating the international entertainment industry. South Korea’s global cultural influence ranking jumped from 31st in 2017 to seventh in 2022, driving tourism as well as industries such as cosmetics. An underlying factor of South Korea’s increased global interest is the country’s unique emphasis on physical appearance.
Because attractiveness is considered a priority, K-beauty can harm your conception of what a beautiful person is. Your eyes are trained to believe true beauty exists only in the K-pop world. Though this applies to social media entirely, it impacts K-beauty the most because K-pop idols often go to extreme, unhealthy lengths to fit these intense standards.
Unlike other countries where beauty comes in a wide variety, many people believe the beauty standard is absolute in Korea. If your facial proportions are slightly different than that of the perfect idol, according to K-beauty, you are not considered truly attractive. The standard is so inherent within Korean culture that even a Pocari Sweat ad pictures a standard-fitting model. Korean commercials seem to offer the narrative “drink this and get a body like mine.” Media continuously feeds images without imperfections, affecting our expectations in real life.
Walking around in public, you will see people have textured skin or hairs that are out of place. Up close, you can see pores on someone’s nose and clumping mascara on someone’s eyelashes. This is not because they lack beauty, but because this is what humans look like outside of the K-pop world. An attractive person in real life may be unattractive to one who constantly consumes K-pop media because they’re judged with K-beauty expectations. Because of this brainwashing, a K-pop-obsessed person is missing out on appreciating the beauty that people possess. Once someone is convinced that K-pop stars are the epitome of beauty, they even criticize the person they see in the mirror. As a result, people go extreme lengths to change features they bully themselves for.
Copying K-pop styles in an attempt to resemble these stunning idols can be a harmless hobby. Replicating idol-like hair styles can be fun for men, and Korean makeup styles can be a hobby for girls. However, K-pop fans with natural faces compare themselves to K-pop idols with plastic surgery. YouTuber Jooshica noted that she referenced a photo of Jang Wonyoung to her eye plastic surgeon and he laughed. People self loathe since they desire to resemble an idol and use K-pop idols as references for cosmetic surgery. Though agencies or management companies often cover the costs of plastic surgery for their artists in hopes of maintaining a certain look for their brand, MedicaTour lists procedures costing anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000, meaning thousands of dollars are being invested into idols’ appearances.
An aspect of K-beauty that is exceptionally damaging is the obsession with appearing natural — a main goal of K-beauty style makeup is to appear flawless naturally. An idol’s job is to pretend their look was achieved effortlessly, even though a team of people and thousands of dollars are invested in their looks. If an idol’s procedures remain secret, they are praised for this effortlessness. However, K-pop fans with natural faces still create a standard in their minds based on extremely unnatural visuals in K-pop media.
The nature of K-beauty standards make it challenging to remember that no one’s hair can be that shiny, have makeup that smooth and possess skin completely free of blemishes all at once. Living a life where you constantly criticize what you see in the mirror and in public is exhausting. With the K-pop industry, it is possible to neglect the value of natural beauty. So, it is crucial to remember that the K-beauty world is saturated with cosmetic procedures, heavy makeup, extreme diets and filtered media. My goal is not to discourage you from indulging in K-pop as entertainment. Rather, I urge you to separate the beauty you see on-screen in the K-pop world from the beauty you see in real life and to diversify your media intake.
Taryn Ogasawara is an Opinion Intern for the summer 2024 quarter. She can be reached at ogasawat@uci.edu.
Edited by Trista Lara and Jaheem Conley.